The Difference Between a Fact and a Factoid

Today I found out the difference between a fact and a factoid. I have gotten several helpful commenters pointing out recently that perhaps I am using the word “factoid” incorrectly in my articles here, thinking that it means the same as “fact”. In fact (eh? eh?) ;-), I am not. But since this is a common area of confusion, indeed English language usage guides typically recommend against using the word “factoid” because of the confusion surrounding it, I have decided to do an article on it.

Due to the confusion surrounding this word, I can absolutely see where they are coming from as “Factoid” has two somewhat distinct definitions, one being more or less a subset of “Fact”, the other not meaning the same thing at all as “Fact”. Despite the general recommendation against its use by English guides, I still like to use it because it is the only single word that means exactly what I’m trying to say in my “Bonus Factoid” section at the end of some articles.

“Fact” obviously means something that is unquestionably true, or as Webster more eloquently puts it, it is the “quality of being actual”.

“Factoid” however means something slightly different. The first definition, for which it would seem I’m incorrect in my usage, is the following: “an invented fact, believed to be true because of its appearance in print”

This was the original definition coined in 1973 by Norman Mailer. Mailer described a factoid as “facts which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper”. He came up with the word, adding the suffix “oid” as an “oid” ending implies “similar but not the same” or more succinctly “like” or “resembling”.

However, thanks in large part to CNN and the BBC in the 1980s/1990s to today including “factoids” in their news casts referring to trivial bits of factual information, there is now a second “official” definition of “factoid” as follows (from Merriam-Webster): “a briefly stated and usually trivial fact”

And it is of course this definition to which I am using this word at the end of some of my articles when I have “BonusFactoids“, bulleted short trivial facts.

524 comments

Actually the second definition is exactly what I took it’s meaning for at first when I saw the word “factoid”, and so would others, I guess. The first meaning is rather unguessable unless it’s known beforehand. So, it’s perfectly okay (of course!) to use the word “factoid” without a scruple 🙂

Ugh, from what you are describing this is a case of a word taking on the opposite of its original meaning due to common enough misuse. It is really frustrating to me, as it completely defeats the point of language to give a word two opposite meanings that are not contextually distinguishable. It’s a lot like what is currently happening to “literally.” I wonder how much longer of people using it to mean “figuratively” it will take before dictionaries just decide that it’s an acceptable second definition.

I personally have never heard a person use literally in place of figuratively, though it frustrates me when people use a word incorrectly and insist it is correct but yes giving a word opposite meanings often causes problems with translation so overall words words should have one or at least very similar definitions or concepts.

Well I am living in the future in 2014 and people, primarily but not exclusively white female suburban girls, have adopted the word literally to mean figuratively. Such as “I just drank this pumpkin spice skinny chai latte and it was LITERALLY the best thing I have ever had. I LITERALLY want to just die right now, I can’t even…”. The time of reckoning is upon us. I wish I could go back to your innocent 2013 days of naivete and bliss, but alas, the future is upon is and it is all that we feared. 2013 people, get out while you still can!

…when using a word sarcastically is interpreted literally and leads to an official alternative definition that contradicts the original meaning of said word. Who is on first…etc. welcome home to the language where the only rule is the exception.

Strophe, I am literally living in the future 2 days ahead of YOU, and my pet peeve in the misuse of language is the phrase, “i could care less,” when the speaker actually means, “I couldn’t care less.” Things don’t get any better.

I believe the tag line/meme “It’s not news, it’s CNN” would be appropriate here. A fact that was not in existence until in the news or in print? Given recent history, they could have unwittingly been using the terms correctly!

I see the frustration. I sympathize with this most concerning slang. Made up words that deteriorate any language. Still, the difference between a ‘living’ language vs. a ‘dead’ language (greek, latin, etc.) is that a living language still changes by culture. All words are made up syllabols. Look at J. R. R. Tolkein who made elvish, a linguistic scholar we laud today because of his inginuity. The nature of language is to be added to until the end of a culture and then either a dialect or a whole language may die out (stop changing). Except for holding to the Christian view of God being the originator of some of our old languages (cf. Tower of Babel) we have to accept the evolution of languag (note even the word evolution has changed and I am using the common form of gradual change over time rather than specific gradual increase/betterment over time).

You seem to mistake languages for something that are set in stone and don’t evolve and change over time. Why is it that we don’t speak the same now as we did in 1000CE? Or 1600? Or even 1800? Because it’s changed and evolved constantly since then. People seem to think that now we have everything set down in dictionaries and such that language is set in stone, and anything outside of that usage is “wrong”. Not, you can put to words into books all you want, but the language will be what words people choose to use in everyday life. If you can communicate with it, it’s language. And of course it will vary greatly depending on region and culture, as it should.

Hmm. You seem to mistake all evolution as permanent change. There are dead ends in biological evolution, as we can expect there to be in linguistic evolution. Misusing words is an expansion phase of evolution; the biological counterpart is the spread of a mutation/adaptation in a population. The next step involves competition between what was and what is new with several possibilities: the new fading away, the old fading away, coexistence as one, and coexistence on a path to greater differentiation. If you want to misuse the language and support the newer definitions of words, so be it, but you must be hoping for either the old fading away or coexistence. But what happens when current definitions do not match the definitions of great works of literature in the past? Those works get misinterpreted and what wisdom the past can offer us is eroded. Political treatises, for example, can take on dramatically different meanings when a founding father praises “liberal economic practices” but is read with the modern definition of “liberal.” I’m all for the growth and development of language; consider what English would be without Shakespeare breaking the rules of what can be nouns or verbs. Unimaginable. But I cannot support the devolution of language, which is driven by ignorance of alternate words of emphasis for “literally” or an awareness of the meaning of the suffix -oid. The Earth is round, but not a perfect sphere; it’s a spheroid and that’s a fact.

You say that, but the same could have been said some time ago for “nonplussed”. There are two, litterally opposite definitions to this word, to wit:
adjective
1.
(of a person) surprised and confused so much that they are unsure how to react.
“he would be completely nonplussed and embarrassed at the idea”
adjective
2.
(of a person) not disconcerted; unperturbed.

The first definition is the “original”, if you will, that is the older definition. However most people use this word to mean the second definition. Words evolve, but it is amazing when they rotate 180!

It would appear then that this is a case of the first definition being used to create the second… since the first says that its something that was believed because of its appearance in print – in this case on Television (CC and BBC) and so they changed the meaning of factoid, by using it as a factoid — man am I now confused ;-).

I am contacting you on behalf f EMDL (Editions Maison des Langues), a publishing house based in Paris. We would like to use an excerpt of an article we found on your website in our new english textbook titled Community 1re: it is an article about Washington and the Cherry Tree (could you please contact me at [email protected]?).
Thank you for you consideration
Best regards,
Beatrice

As Mailer’s renown and skill as a writer and wordsmith is infinitely greater than the author of this blog, 99% of readers are going to take the word “factoid” for what it is, a false fact. Now that the author has wrote this disclaimer, it will be so much less confusing…not! Amazing the lengths people will go to avoid admitting they were wrong!-} What I find interesting tho is that Mailer’s “factoid” has become as dubious a word as the non-facts he was describing.

The English language has survived for hundreds of years without your guidance, Billy Black, Literally Annoyed, and Kococum, and will continue to survive long after you are gone. Find something else to waste your energy one, your attempts to chain down language are accomplishing nothing more than insulting the very thing you claim to cherish.

I would say that i’m surprised that people on the internet actually made a big deal out of this… but i’m not. I’m just happy when I see people using proper punctuation and spelling. I guess I have low standards, considering that the majority of people online seemingly failed 6th grade English.

Just write “bonus trivia,” and save everyone a lot of trouble. It’s easier than trying to justify the use of a stupid, unclear term.

@Anonymous

The English language has survived for hundreds of years without your guidance and will continue to survive long after you are gone. Find something else to waste your energy one (sic), your attempts to chain down language are accomplishing nothing more than insulting the very thing you claim to cherish.

I am a Grammar Nazi extraordinaire. I have to be, it’s my job. I edit papers etc. for college and university students. You wouldn’t believe the crap they write. I don’t understand how some of them graduated primary school, much less high school. On the internet it’s even worse, the English language has been bastardized into unintelligible gibberish! In self defense I have had to learn what I have come to term “Chatspeak” or “Textish” just to be able to understand the drivel that I see all the time. Short forms, acronyms and esoteric references abound to the extent that you can write an entire paragraph without resorting to the good old English language.
R.I.P. English you will be missed by many . . .

There were way more problems than that. If though, Flexicon, you should find yourself wanting to point out that particular error then, I would add that, there should also be one following the ‘R.I.P.’ Even if it looks gauche as hell to write, “R.I.P., English, you will be…” because of the double punctuation mark it is still correct to offset the term of address (personified English) with a comma both before and after. Cheers.

Not really. Spelling “bastardized” with “z” rather than “s” is one of the changes American English made to bring the language’s spelling more into line with its pronunciation. (“s” indicates an unvoiced consonant but you don’t say “bastar-diced”)

The difference between “s” and “z” is whether the consonant is voiced (whether you engage your vocal chords) and the -ise ending is voiced, so it makes more sense for it to use “z”. (Don’t believe me? Try saying “ssssszzzzzssssszzzzzssssszzzzz” and you’ll see how the only thing that changes is that you’re turning your vocal chords on and off while you let the air continue to flow.)

Same reason American English uses “color” rather than “colour”. The “cul-er” pronunciation is better represented by “color” than the French-inspired “colour” spelling used in Commonwealth countries (hello from Canada). (Which doesn’t really make much since anyway, given that, according to etymonline.com, both the American English “color” and the modern French “couleur” descend from “color” in Old French, which itself descends from “color” in Latin and then “colos” (covering) in Old Latin.)

Second ‘definition’ is bullshit. Having two definitions, one meaning something that’s coroborated and one that isn’t is so much bollocks it’s no wonder English is turning to shit. It’s hard to know what any fucker means because even words don’t make any fucking sense.

BBC and CNN got it wrong repeatedly. Just like Alanis Morrisette with her false irony. Now everything’s fucking ironic when it isn’t. Eventually if nothing is done to adress it, the word will cease to mean anything.

I am from Britain and so know that the media there generally means “factoid” to mean what it was described as by the Tory party – Some small soundbite, that if repeated often enough, will be believed. (Usually assumed to imply that it will be believed, even if it is not true).

So in that respect, you are using it correctly, as I believe it was the Tories (Conservative) party who introduced the idea in the 1980s. To my way of thinking, they then get the right to define their new word and anyone who uses it with a different meaning, is actually changing the original meaning of the word.

Did ANYone notice the picture of the sign which says “excetions”? I’m pretty sure that’s not a word. You people should stop arguing about whether language is what people use to communicate or what they should be using to communicate, and read the actual article!

Yep, that’s what happens when a British linguist gets clever and whitty by making satire of a word and its meaning. You get people who don’t get the parody and then commonly use the new word incorrectly. To be honest, Mailer would probably be tickled by this entire response chain.

Medically speaking, a fact is something that has really occurred or is the case: hence a datum of experience, as distinct from conclusions. Loosely defined, something that is alleged to be, or might be a “fact.” while on the other hand a factoid is a fact that never existed before it appeared in print, but has been reprinted ever since. It is truly launched if it first appears in a reputable medical journal like the Journal of the American Medical Association and republished in the New York Times which gives it international stature. A factoid, using simple Anglo Saxon terminology, is a lie, and like many lies and misconceptions, once it has been published develops a life of its own and is reprinted over and over, from textbook to textbook. The best example is the lie (factoid) that vitamin C causes kidney stones.

The way I was taught, a “fact” is something that can be demonstrated to be either true OR false, (kind-of like a noun for intellectuals).
[fact = the opposite of opinion]
That many people don’t understand this, is why so many companies emphasize the word “fact” in the commercials; they throw “fact” out there to blind people to the following untruth. (Then when things go wrong, they have an excuse, “Hey, we said it was “a fact” that you could make “up-to” $1000.)
If “fact” simply meant “true,” we’d only need the word “true” and “truth.”

In my opinion, I believe issues involving the proper use of terms can be a very tricky business. For some people, such as myself, precise and carefully constructed diction is extremely important. Many of us struggle with whether it is appropriate or even “moral”, so-to-speak, to employ terms and definitions which, although popular, are etymologically inconsistent or incoherent. For example, the term “humorous” is most often used in modern English to refer to that which is funny, amusing, or otherwise entertaining. However, the etymological root of “humorous” is “of or relating to bodily fluids, specifically the humors,” dating back to ancient and medieval physiology. From an etymologicaly standpoint, when we use the word “humorous,” we are essentially stating that a given action, event, or phenomenon which excites one’s humors to the point of causing a sensation of amusement or entertained jolliness.

I believe this whole issue between “fact” and “factoid” is a similar case. The author prefers to utilize “factoid” as meaning a trivial tidbit of news or information, despite how this definition is inconsistent with the etymological roots of the term. For an individual like me, I disagree that “factoid” should be used to mean its more popular, albeit etymologically inconsistent, definition. Since the definition of the term as used by the author is more popular, and is clearly his preference, I must accept the fact that he is using “factoid” inconsistent with the etymological roots of the term.

For those of you who also disapprove of the author’s use of “factoid,” remember that language evolves over time and many of the terms and phrases we use today originate from etymological roots which are rather inconsistent with their modern application. Having said that, it’s ultimately the author’s decision to use the words he chooses in the way he prefers, even if they are not consistent with the etymology of the terms. I don’t see much of anyone ever complaining about the use of the term “humorous,” yet it is arguably just as misused as is the author’s use of “factoid.” Therefore, there isn’t really any reason to complain about this.

If you need a single word for a “little fact” or a bit of trivia, use an appropriate term for it, such as factette.
Please do not perpetuate a misuse of the word factoid and its original meaning just because people haven’t bothered to find out its “real” meaning. A humanoid is not a little human, it is something resembling a human. Is a hemorrhoid trivial?

A lot of confusion would be cleared if people learn their own language. As stated by Rick above, it’s amazing how people have killed the English language. English being my second language, I am able to catch many more mistakes than others in writing then others in my high school whose only language is English. Of course, with English being my second language, my grammar and sentence structure may sound odd and may even be wrong. XD

I have a question about a word in the sign in your article from the Village of Crestwood. Is the word “Stranczek” an English word? The Mayor should practice what he preaches and put all English words in his sign. Speak English!

I agree here. “-oid” as a suffix means “shaped” or “resembling”, as in: ovoid – egg-shaped, or opioid, opiate-shaped (molecularly speaking). In other words, it’s not the thing itself, but merely resembles it.
Now, I’m not a prescriptivist, but there are words, (and prefixes and suffixes), whose meaning we shouldn’t lose, as there’s no replacement for them. “Factoid”, meaning not a fact, but resembling one, is such a word. I think “Bonus Facts” is a better choice.

In the particular area of the sciences in which I work, “factoid” is a common usage, meaning “something resembling a fact, but not to be fundamentally trusted”. For example, a factoid could be a statistic that can be used a selling point which, while technically true, might result in the listener coming to a conclusion the speaker doesn’t believe. Typically factoids are used somewhat cynically, often in grant proposals or elevator pitches. “Misleading fact” or “untrustworthy fact” would be closer to the typical usage than “false fact”.

The misuse of the word “factoid” all got started because CNN hired an idiot who wasn’t educated or well-read enough to actually be working as a writer, producer, or editor. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there like that. I fail to see why anyone would be proud of misusing a word and would continue to do so even when they knew it was wrong.

I’ve always understood Factoid to be fact-like, therefore not-fact, therefore, not true or fact.
However, being a human with a keen sense for context, when I saw Factoids here, I understood it to mean, “little facts” or “facts of a tangential nature.”
English is funny like that.

Interesting. I always believed a factoid to be a cherry-picked part of a fact that, while provably true in itself, neglects certain other aspects of the fact and is thereby intended to lead the reader to an erroneous conclusion. For example, a factoid might be “Everyone born before 1850 who ate tomatoes is now dead” While this is in fact true, it implies the false conclusion that tomatoes are a leading cause of death. But the factoid neglects to include the part about anyone born before 1850 now being over 167 years old, and nobody lives that long whether they eat tomatoes or not.

English is a living language and as such is fluid. It constantly changes and neither institutions nor individuals can stop that. They can write books which try to define the language and they have great success with it, but they can never fully capture it nor restrict the change. The only thing that decides how the language is used and how it changes is the population that uses it. If you believe that English should never change, go back to the original English which is closer to German than the English we know today.

This thread is just an awesome read! The passion of the participants is entertaining. I originally took the author’s meaning as well, but after reading everything written, have come to the conclusion that the author is incorrect as well as myself. Android, humanoid, ovoid, etc.. all mean “to resemble or to appear as”, using the “oid” suffix.

In humanoid, it means that the object while appearing to be human in appearance, is in fact not human.

While in the word opiod means, chemically in structure to resemble opiates as a group, but does not preclude it from being an actual opiate.

So from observing the accepted and legitimized usage of the suffix, in both cases, not pointing to the truthfulness of the inherent nature, but rather to the semblance or appearance of, I believe people are attempting to define the word in constraints that are by no means consistent.

“Cats purr.”, is a factoid. Some cats purr, but some do not. So while it is a fact in one case, it is not in others, but retains the semblance of fact.

So while listing “small facts” as factoids, you are grouping them in such a manner, that the label which includes “oid” infers that the true / false nature is not definite. This is a problem, as the expression, 2+2=4, is a small fact, it is not a factoid, it is a fact. Whereas, saying, “99.999% of people believe water is wet.”, is a factoid, because uou cannot prove the true / false nature of the “99.999%” of the statement, but all reasonable people would consider this as fact.

So I now, once having agreed with the author, have changed my mind. A factoid is that which while appearing as fact, cannot not or does not, have it’s veracity confirmed, but is widely considered as fact, while being objectively open to the possibility of being false.

So the author’s use is incorrect, regardless of whether I correctly understood his intent.

Here in 2017 there is an epidemic of over-use of little known factoids. “Epidemic” is used incorrectly there and it is not “factoids” but “opioids” and deaths are occurring everywhere. Or so they say. Who is “they”? Or are “they”? Government is who and they use the media to get the word out and it is a “media frenzy” they employ so that they can get us worked up and angry, demand something be done by way of taking our Rights or least another chunk. “Opioid” is interchangeable with “opiate” in printed “news” but it is “synthetic pain reliever” they are referring to not heroin. But toss in heroin so that many are arrested and much more assets seized.
But if you read something and you do not understand words in it you will not ask or look it up because who wants to appear stupid? Nobody does. That is what they count on. So pay no attention to the factoids from government and the media. and you will not worry about appearing stupid. A fact is a fact and nothing else is a fact.
The truth is not fact and the truth will not set you free. What you can remember as if it were just yesterday is nothing. Nobody has a photographic memory. Eye-witnesses are wrong more often than not. Taking somebody at their word allows you to be taken. Laws do not prevent crimes but only provide for punishment and those who demand “mandatory minimums” in sentencing do not understand the judicial system and are making a judge useless except to monitor the courtroom for violations and make rulings on procedure. The President cannot change The Bill of Rights but he never reminds the People of that. He continues to talk giving the impression he is part of the process, he is not. The Supreme Court make no laws they only rule on the meaning of laws, if they feel like it. And their ruling is not forever, laws must be tested in court before they actually are laws.
These are facts. Only facts can be used in court. And the fact that I know this nation is in big trouble and going down fast is the fact that “Community Service” is now a punishment, and Congress was complaining about the “revolving door of government” making it hard to get anything done! It is or was designed as and supposed to be a revolving door to keep it fair and just. Otherwise is becomes dictatorial. Demanding that elections be a majority rules is bad. This is not a Democracy but some things are democratic, a “majority rules” is 2 wolves and a lamb are going to vote on what to have for dinner…